Go For Broke

In Land of the Giants: The Google Empire, Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary and Big Technology's Alex Kantrowitz explore how a company that began with idealistic goals of creative experimentation and making useful products has turned into a worldwide power with enormous impact on the way we live.

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Pets.com. Webvan. Kozmo.com. All these companies met their demise when the bubble burst. But their ideas live on today, in Chewy.com, Fresh Direct, Postmates, and many other start-ups. Looking at 2020 through the lens of the dot-com crash, what's changed about the tech industry and the way we think about technology, and what's stayed the same? And are we in another bubble?

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

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Dot-com companies attracted a lot of people interested in working in exciting new businesses with a start-up mentality. From bike messengers delivering food ordered over the Internet to warehouse workers shipping dog collars across the country, dot-com workers embraced the short-term perks (free food! jeans at the office!) and the potential for big paydays (stock options!). But when the bubble collapsed, many workers were left with nothing but risk. 

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

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Venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs chasing big payouts helped inflate the dot-com bubble. But other forces brought the mania to individual investors, and tried to keep the party going, even as dot-com companies started failing left and right. As Jane and Joe Schmo saw their retirement accounts plummet, who was going to take the blame?

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

Sources for this episode include John Cassidy's 2003 New Yorker article "The Investigation." You can read the article here. For more on the Internet era from Netscape to the iPad, check out episode guest Brian McCullough's Internet History Podcast.

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Before MySpace and Facebook, there was BlackPlanet. BlackPlanet.com, a social media site targeted to Black users, was immediately popular when it launched in 1999. It allowed users to create their own personal web pages, set up dating profiles, and look for jobs. But venture capitalists and other investors largely overlooked BlackPlanet during the dot-com boom. Meanwhile, other companies like theGlobe.com saw investment money pour in and their valuation skyrocket in the public markets, despite having weak business models and a tricky road to profitability.

How did venture capitalists choose which dot-coms to invest in, and how did their blueprint for investment tip the scales to certain types of companies? And how did the rush to ride the dot-com bubble lead to the crash?

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

Special thanks to Aliya King, author of the article "The Black Internet Gold Rush That Wiped Away $75 Million in 18 Months." You can read the article here.

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To examine the start of the dot-com bubble, we go back to 1995, the year technology became a part of our popular culture, just as the Internet was changing. Two key events happened that year -- Windows 95 launched with huge fanfare, making it so that the average person would use a computer at home; and a browser company named Netscape went public and quickly became worth $3 billion, despite having been founded only 16 months before and having never turned a profit. For the engineers and web designers who were pursuing their vision of the Internet as a creative, experimental place, the arrival of the “dot-com guys” was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Wall Street made them millionaires, at least on paper. But the influx of investors and businessmen seeking fast riches threatened to change Silicon Valley culture forever. 

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

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What many of us remember of the dot-com era of the late 90s and 2000 were the ads, the hype. We saw a DIY sock puppet voiced by actor Michael Ian Black become the mascot for Pets.com and a pop culture celebrity in its own right. But even as the sock puppet found itself at the Oscars and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the company couldn't reach the same level of success. Why was marketing considered so critical to the success of Pets.com and other dot-com companies, and why didn’t it work?

From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan.

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Go For Broke is a new series about those moments in history when people get way too confident in a big idea. Our first season explores the frenzy of the original dot-com bubble, and what happened when the bubble popped. New episodes every Thursday starting October 8th. From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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